Shields?

[Deleted User]

Thought i would be the one to start the Threads in here i was wondering if anyone knows a good way to go about makeing the shield effect for ships...?

backstept

I saw an animation once where they didn't use the typical shield bubble, but projector spotlights with some sort of animated wavy texture

lennier1

The classic Max tutorial: http://discovery.scifi-art.com/shields/index.html
Should be easy to translate it to all 3D apps.

[Deleted User]

Thanks Max is what i use....

fluxfire

Is there one for LW?

booa

anyone wanna post a shield in max? i really wanna compare my experiments with a good shield.

thanks in advance

Andrew March

Do you, why not post what you've got so far, I'm sure people will be able to advise you on how to tweak it if neccesary.

count23

backstept wrote: »

I saw an animation once where they didn't use the typical shield bubble, but projector spotlights with some sort of animated wavy texture

That was probably Nutsy's "Sudden Strike" animation between a Post-Nemesis starfleet ship and a Kerchan class warbird. He tried to emulate the nemesis style shield impacts from that movie and it turned out quite well.

Maybe Nutsy will upload it again one day

[Deleted User]

I also made this last year using a partical system instead of a spot light... Again turned out well Though there was some problems with it if you get too close to really complex edges.

hal

Thats a nice animated sheild affect, much better than the standed bubble!

count23

Nutsy: that was impressive, how'd you pull that off with particles?

D.M.J.

That is a great effect. How did you do that with particles?

Melak

"Turned out well" ? That's amazing!:eek:
I looked at a water drop particle tutorial to see if I could modify it to look like a skin tight shield effect, but I couldn't get it to work...How'd you do it?
I'm also curious how you used a spotlight, isn't there a kind of map that changes the color if light hits it, if so I'd put that in the opacity slot of the shield, and then project something blueish with the light...I have no idea if that's what you did, but I'll try anyway because I can't really handle particles :shiner:

[Deleted User]

The new one with my galaxy fly over is all particals with the animated texture map i made playing out on a conformaing plane created by the plasma bolts hitting the skin tight bubble i made around the mesh.

Im not going to make a tutorial as its not really that hard. Just look up on Pflow stuff:)

count23

so it's just a collision event using particle groups? I thought the texture was made using particles too.

[Deleted User]

Is there a PS tut for this sort of thing. My experiments turned out well but were limited in style.

Dan Carley

Nutsy wrote: »

The new one with my galaxy fly over is all particals with the animated texture map i made playing out on a conformaing plane created by the plasma bolts hitting the skin tight bubble i made around the mesh.

Im not going to make a tutorial as its not really that hard. Just look up on Pflow stuff:)

is that in 3ds max?, and by Pflow u mean Particle Flow?

& Can't u just do a simple explination, cus I didn't get fully what u ment, I know its basicly particles flowing over a plane u created around ur ship.

count23

Yea Nutsy, and i'm using Lightwave, so i have to adapt Pflow methods to Hypervoxels or partigons, so a little less Cryptic would be nice

[Deleted User]

Pflow is the short name for partical flow.

I made a skin tight bubble model around my ship. The sheild wave texture is an animated texture i made in after effects. In pflow I setup particals to be the plasma bolts. There is a colision event that sends turns them into a shockwave.
I cant remember the name but its some thing like compound plane. What it does is create a square conforming to teh shape of my skin tight bubble mesh. And this is what shows the shock wave effect. A little glow in post and thats all it was.

Dan Carley

thats still very confusing lol, did u use PF Source? or was it one of the other particles?

Guerrilla

It's gotta have a pflow source. Otherwise you're not using Particle Flow. If nutsy's post didn't make sense I'd recommend going through the pflow documentation somewhat.

Here's a tutorial that I think is pretty similar to what Nutsy did.

Basically, it goes a little bit like this:

System shooting particles --> Collision test --> Delete particle and spawn 'impact particles' (in this case with Shape Mark on the 'shield bubble')--> Age test --> Impact particles die

Apart from Particle Flow you need an animated texture to use with the impacts.

It may be a bit difficult to set up, but if you do Pete's tutorial you should at least have an idea on what's going on.

[Deleted User]

Thats exsacly it... Follow that tutorial

count23

that looks like how they do it in Stargate Atlantis for Daedalus shield hits. I guess it must be moddable to lightwave, i'll just have to figure out how But that's half the fun of 3d graphics, isnt it?

Guerrilla

Very true.

I don't know anything about LW particles, but if you guys have an event driven particle system available it should be fairly easy to set up. Actually, you don't need an advanced particle system at all as long as the basic system can do collisions and spawn other particles.

Dan Carley

but thos animated impact hits would have to be, alpha channeled too right?

fluxfire

Hum seems like some thing i could adapt to LW from what i can see its not to dissimalar

count23

fluxfire: everything is adaptable except the dynamically displaced object over the collision object :S Been trying to figure it out, but still cant get it right

fluxfire

The only LW shield tut i can locate is Here Its under the works section under 3D Drivers.
Its for an older version of LW. when i get some free time i will be trying that.

Zardoz

Nutsy, how you manage to glow the "rings" of your shield FX ??? I'm trying to imitate these effect, but aplying glow via Material ID not end to work, because 3d max get these material ID for all shape mark and make to glow anything back of the shield.

I think to doing it, doing render by layers and composite the shield over the ship, but i see that the shield not have alpha ! (have 0 alpha!)

How hell i can fix this ?

[Deleted User]

Did the glow in After effects

Melak

//edit// Nevermind, I ultimately found what I was looking for in the User Reference.